I Am a Human Being Identity Map

Client has a list of professional goals that are coherent and reasonable. When asked which of those goals genuinely excites them, they pause. The goals were set in performance reviews, shaped by organizational expectations, and refined through conversations about career development. None of them were set by asking the question this tool opens with: who is this person, what do they love, what drives them? The twelve sentence stems build that picture from scratch, and the goals that emerge from or connect to that picture tend to be more durable than the ones that preceded it.

Frame the exercise as reading the person before reading the goals. 'Before we spend more time on the goals you've been working toward, I want to spend a few minutes on the person pursuing them. These twelve sentence stems build a picture of what drives you, what you believe in, where you tend to get in your own way. By the end, we can check whether your current goals connect to any of it.' The resistance from goal-focused clients is impatience: 'I know who I am — let's talk about what I need to do.' Name it: 'Goals set without a clear understanding of what drives the person pursuing them tend to stall at the first significant obstacle. This takes fifteen minutes. The connection it surfaces is worth that.'

Watch the 'Is afraid of' and 'Has a habit of' stems — these are the two that clients most often complete with something safe rather than something true. 'Is afraid of failure' is a non-answer; almost everyone is afraid of failure. The useful answer names what specific failure the client most dreads, or what specific context activates the fear. Same with 'Has a habit of': 'overworking' is generic. 'Starting new projects before finishing existing ones' is specific enough to be useful. Also watch for the 'Would give' stem being completed with something material rather than something the client actually values.

After all twelve stems are complete, ask the client to read the sheet silently as a single paragraph, then name: 'What does this person want most?' Then: 'Is there a tension between any two of your responses — something you believe in and something you're afraid of, or something you love and something you avoid?' That tension question often surfaces the most productive coaching content of the exercise. Close with: 'What current goal connects most directly to who you described here?'

Client is new to coaching or entering a new phase of an existing engagement. The early sessions are establishing what the client wants to work on and what resources they bring. The twelve stems provide a structured way to generate a complete self-picture quickly: drives, beliefs, habits, fears, aspirations. That picture informs every subsequent conversation — it provides context for why certain goals matter, why certain patterns repeat, and what the client is working against as much as what they are working toward.

Frame this as building the foundation for the coaching work. 'One of the most useful things we can do early in coaching is develop a clear picture of what drives you, what you believe in, and where you tend to get in your own way. These twelve sentence stems take about fifteen minutes to complete and give us a reference point we can come back to throughout our work together.' Some clients experience this as an assessment and become strategic about their answers. Name it: 'There are no good or bad answers here. What makes these useful is honesty, not presentation. The patterns in what you write tell us something — and the stems you find hardest to complete often tell us the most.'

Watch for 'Is happiest when' and 'Believes in' being completed with professionally appropriate answers rather than genuine ones. 'Happiest when making progress toward my goals' is a performance answer; 'happiest when working with my hands' or 'happiest when my kids are all in the same room' is a real one. The professional framing contaminating the personal stems is common in early engagement — the client is still calibrating what is appropriate to share. Also watch for 'Will one day' being answered with something already planned rather than something genuinely aspirational: 'will one day retire comfortably' is a plan, not an aspiration.

After all twelve stems are complete, ask the client to read the sheet aloud — the full set of responses as a single paragraph. Then: 'Which of these twelve surprised you — something you wrote that you hadn't expected to write?' The surprise reveals where the exercise reached below the prepared version of the person. That stem becomes the first point of entry in the coaching work. Close with: 'Which stem took the longest to complete, and what made it difficult?' Difficulty on a specific stem is almost always pointing at something worth following.

Client has a set of goals they have been working toward for years. The goals made complete sense when they were set — they aligned with the person the client was at the time, with their values, their fears, and their aspirations. In the years since, something has shifted: values have changed, a significant experience has reoriented priorities, or the client has simply grown in a direction that the original goals do not reflect. The twelve stems surface who the client is now, and comparing that picture to the current goal set reveals whether alignment exists or whether the goals are artifacts of an earlier version of the person.

Frame this as a check on whether the goals still fit the person. 'You've been working toward these goals for a while. Before we plan the next phase, I want to check something: whether the goals still fit who you are now. These twelve stems build a picture of the current version — and we'll look at whether your goals come from that picture or from an earlier one.' The resistance here is from clients who have invested significantly in their goals and are not ready to reconsider them. Name it: 'This is not a reason to abandon the goals. It is a check on whether they still connect to what actually drives you. If they do, you'll know that and the plan gets stronger. If they don't, you'll know that too — which is more useful than continuing to pursue goals that have lost their pull.'

Watch for 'Loves,' 'Is inspired by,' and 'Is happiest when' describing things that are entirely absent from the current goal set. If the client loves creative work and is inspired by building things with their hands, but every current goal is about organizational performance and career advancement, the stems have surfaced a misalignment that the coaching conversation should address. Also watch for 'Is afraid of' describing fears that are actually being run away from rather than addressed: a client afraid of irrelevance who is pursuing visibility for the wrong reasons.

After all twelve stems are complete, ask the client to identify one stem that reflects a genuine change from how they would have answered it three years ago. Then: 'Is that change visible anywhere in your current goals?' If the answer is no, the goals were set by a different version of the person and have not been updated. Close with: 'What would you add to or remove from your current goal set if it had to reflect the twelve responses you just wrote?' One addition and one removal is a reasonable ask — not a wholesale revision.